Foodplot: Parte Uno [Closed]

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

After the 'bitching about Stacy' session finally reached a head, Sakura and Howard decided to actually do something about all the questions they had about their spacefaring fleshy home. Granted, they couldn't really find anything out about the Ohm on their own, and the Daligig were Right Out, so that left exploring the ship itself.

Time for them to find out what it is that they're putting in their bodies.

They drew on a few people they trust, or at least have figured out well enough to not distrust (more than they usually do), and now they're gathered at the mess hall at some awkward hour when no one is there to eat. They've brought Kanoe Zouichi (specialties: stuff going boom and wrangling Howard into being cooperative) and Ian Chesterton (specialties: hot cocoa, also science). And Ian's brought Barbara Wright (specialties: ??? and pissing Howard off).

Howard's tucking away at a tray of slop, figuring that if they're going to find anything that puts them off eating food forever, he might as well enjoy sweet, delicious ignorance now.

Comments

Mingling

[meat_mooks]

[Free for all thread, feel free to subthread and threadjack, just to get some conversations started before I get more information on the setting for the mods.]

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"I'm betting money right now that it's something that's going to give us nightmares forever," Howard says, setting his fork down next to his tray (which he's polished clean, naturally). "I mean, the Reavers were getting fed clones, right? We're probably eating vats of cell cultures or something."

[encourage]

"They were being fed clones, sure." Sakura looked over at Howard, frowning. "What makes even less sense is they didn't bother trying to acclimitize them to the slop. Why the exception? No, I don't want to know. I don't want to know how resource intensive it is to make as many clones as they needed to be kept fed. Or whose clones those were."

Sakura shivered, staring at Howard's slop like it was some vast abyss of terrible possibilities.

Then she shrugged. "We've already got nightmares. What's a few more on top of the rest?"

[zouichi]

"It makes sense if they were a contingency plan. Keep feeding them humanoid prey, and their instincts will be that much sharper when they need to be loosed on a population." Zouichi had fully embraced cynical pessimism. Maybe they were eating the ship! Or clones of themselves! Or babies! Or clone babies!

He had most of his weapons with him, including some new little toys he'd picked up after the battle with SHODAN. When in doubt, come well armed, right?

[first_in_time]

When Barbara entered, she sighed quietly to herself with relief that it wasn't going to be just her, Howard and Ian. She was sure that Howard was a nice enough young man - especially after Ian spoke so highly of him - but they clashed a little before. Now, however, might be a good time to patch things up. And she was interested in finding out more about Stacey, herself.

"What's that about clones?" Barbara asked as she approached.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard leads them over to the chutes that the food comes out of. "I hope none of you like your clothes clean."

He points up. "As far as I've been able to tell, that's the only way up. We should probably all go up the same one, so we stick together. Who wants to go first?"

The chutes look rather uninviting. The insides are slick with slop and they go up maybe twenty feet, which means it's quite a long, slippery climb.

[zouichi]

Zouichi looked dubiously up at the shaft. "Can't we just... send a probe up there?"

Because while he was certainly used to less-than-sparkling-clean conditions, he would rather not wade through who knew how many meters of foul, viscous sludge if he didn't have to. Perhaps if he had ever watched The Shawshank Redemption, he would have -- no, he'd still be reluctant.

[first_in_time]

Looking up, the chute looked like it had seen better days, and that climbing it would be difficult. But after how useless she was to Sakura, Barbara had something to prove.

"I'll go first," she said with some kind of determination. "If I can get a leg up, I should be able to push my back against one of the walls and walk up from there. Unless you've anything we could use in your bag?" she pointed to Howard's bag and hoped that there might be something in there which would make it somewhat easier.

[splendid_roman]

It didn't look like it would be an easy or pleasant climb, which Ian supposed discouraged people from doing it in the past. But it didn't look impossible and he remembered getting past worst obstacles, so Ian was happy to try it. Although he should probably go last in case anyone else fell.

"Probes are never going to be quite the same as people," he said to Zouichi. He didn't know if they had anything they could use as a probe or to help them climb, but if anyone did have anything useful, Howard would.

"I'll give you a leg up," he offered Barbara, in the event that no one had anything to help.

[encourage]

Right. Going up it was.

"If the ship is going to put up with us crawling up there, it might as well put up with a little security." Sakura had a short length of rope she was taking out of her thigh pack, along with two of her kunai. She looked over to Barbara, then stepped past briefly to slam one into the ship herself. "Testing before I hand them over," she offered by way of explanation, outwardly nonchalant as she waited for any reaction from the ship to being stabbed.

"The rope can make sure you don't get pulled away, if we keep one end with us. These," she said, holding up her free kunai, "Can be good for extra emergency hand and footholds."

Pending. She was still waiting on either a reaction, or the continued lack of one.

Tunnel 1: Sakura and Barbara

[meat_mooks]

While the tunnels look the same at the start, they soon branch off to different locations. The amount of crusted goo in the passage reduces down to only occasional clumps, and after about a hundred yards they can find that there are lights on the floor, much like in an airplane aisle or like in the pod caverns. Given Stacy's size it's about another quarter-mile to the end of the tunnel, from which emanates the sound of churning, and given the upward slope of the passage it might take them ten minutes or so to reach the room at the end.

Re: Tunnel 1: Sakura and Barbara

[first_in_time]

Barbara stood at the bottom of the slope and looked up to try and see where the tunnel might lead. "I don't suppose you have any idea what that noise might be?" The last thing Barbara wanted was to fall into something dangerous, or to actually be eaten by Stacey.

Re: Tunnel 1: Sakura and Barbara

[encourage]

Sakura listened close, then shook her head. "Not specifically," she said, a little apologetic. "Mechanical, but of what?" She still had her length of rope in hand, and looked from Barbara, back to herself.

"It might be worthwhile making sure we're connected for the duration. If one or the other of us takes a fall, the other can catch and hopefully slow us down. If we need to get out or separate, we can use a kunai or undo the knots."

She waited to see what Barbara thought, shoving the flashlight Howard had given her up under one arm.

Re: Tunnel 1: Sakura and Barbara

[first_in_time]

"Good idea," Barbara smiled, "and if there are blades or something similarly sinister down there, we can stop the other from falling."

The gifted kunai were still attached to the ridiculous belt loops, so if she needed to cut herself free quickly, she'd be alright. "I'm afraid I'm not terribly good at knots," the rope went back around her waist easily enough but she couldn't recreate the knot Howard had used before.

Re: Tunnel 1: Sakura and Barbara

[encourage]

Sakura laughed, if she took Barbara's suggestion seriously. One never knew what the ship could be hiding. "Yes, just in case."

She stepped closer, holding her hands out for Barbara's end of the rope. "If you'd like, I can teach you some of the knots I know. They probably aren't the same as Howard's, but they're effective, and from my own world." She deliberately tied a knot slowly enough to be followed, if it probably wasn't immediately clear how and why she wove the knot as she did.

Short work on herself had the two of them attached with a five foot or so of slack between them. Sakura offered the flashlight to Barbara. "Can I make you responsible for lighting our way?"

Tunnel 2: Ian, Zouichi and Howard

[meat_mooks]

This tunnel, by contrast, slopes downwards, at such an angle that at points it's harder to walk down than to just slide. There are little dips and valleys throughout the passage, in which some sort of dark liquid is congealed. It might be worth taking a sample of that. The tunnel is twisty enough that they can't see the ending, although the air gets increasingly humid and hard to breathe in.

Re: Tunnel 2: Ian, Zouichi and Howard

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"It's weird. The slop doesn't smell like much but I'm pretty sure a tentacle died in here or something." Howard slides a bit in a puddle of the slimy dark stuff. "Either of you guys got any idea what's in the air here? You happen to pocket a gas mass spectrometer or something, Teach?"

Someone's been watching Media Library tapes of CSI.

Re: Tunnel 2: Ian, Zouichi and Howard

[zouichi]

Zouichi produced a small vial from one of his pockets, collecting some of the dark liquid before putting it away once more. The footing was a little rough, but at least he didn't need to worry about breathing.

"You'd think the food would pick up some of the smell." Hopefully they weren't contaminating the slop by being in here. Although it smelled contaminated enough already.

Re: Tunnel 2: Ian, Zouichi and Howard

[splendid_roman]

"No, but we can take it back to the lab and examine it." The way the tunnel sloped made him think that something didn't come up here, it went down. "Perhaps this takes some sort of waste products away. You don't pump anything up a slope." Generally. It certainly wouldn't be productive.

Re: Tunnel 2: Ian, Zouichi and Howard

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Unless it's coming down from a higher slope. I mean, this place is the size of a moon. Who knows how far this goes? God, someone needs to install a Glade filter or something in here."

The tunnel walls around them shudder. Howard hesitates. "I'm not the only one who noticed that, right?"

ESCAPE FROM GOO ISLAND

[meat_mooks]

The girls are unceremoniously dumped through a hole that just appeared in the ceiling, only to land pretty much on top of the guys.

Before anyone really has a chance to react, more tentacles shoot out from every fleshy part of the ship, trying to grab the intruders and shove them down a chute towards the back.

[OOC: everyone tag in and that will establish tag order.]

Re: ESCAPE FROM GOO ISLAND

[first_in_time]

Still covered in drying slop from the vent she originally crawled up, Barbara slipped down the hole easily and landed with a wet thud on the ground below. Well, not so much ground as men.

She groaned, holding her head which slapped against something, probably someone else's head, before catching sight of the wriggling, slimy tentacles reaching for her.

Barbara screamed and clambered to get off whoever she landed on.

Re: ESCAPE FROM GOO ISLAND

[encourage]

Sakura didn't know exactly what part of who she'd landed on, but she could feel part of a tentacle still wrapped around her wrist even as more came down and clamped down on her. She wasn't in the mood to go limp and let them pull her along, pulling away from them with a burst of adrenaline and using chakra to cut through the next one that came in contact with her.

Unfortunately, as soon as they were charged with whatever energy field Stacy could potentially use to keep people contained, she wouldn't be able to retaliate in that way. Until that point...

"Where the hell does that go?!"

Re: ESCAPE FROM GOO ISLAND

[splendid_roman]

Ian barely had time to realise there was something coming from the ceiling before the girls landed on top of them. He was still slightly dazed when he heard Barbara's scream and instinctively grabbed hold of her with one arm, using his free hand to bat away the tentacles.

"I don't know," he said, in reply to Sakura's question. "Either they want to get us out of here or they want to make us into food." Either way Ian was all for seeing where they went, although not if it meant putting the others in danger by taking them with him or leaving them here.

Re: ESCAPE FROM GOO ISLAND

[zouichi]

Zouichi batted the tentacles away from him irritably, glancing toward Howard. "Everyone all right so far?"

Well... except for the goo and tentacles and that horrid smell, anyway.